[infamia]

> The sanctions game certainly has a life of its own now, especially as Russia’s military stumbled, but I don’t believe it would have reached this intensity without motivation from the US. And who knows what diplomacy could have achieved if given a chance instead of continuous escalation.

Russia had a golden opportunity to stop the invasion before it began when Zelensky indicated that he was willing to forgo NATO membership and keep Ukraine neutral. That was really the only window, which Putin decided to ignore and invade. Almost from the moment the bombs started dropping on Kyiv and elsewhere, the window had closed. Europe has been driving the diplomatic, sanctions, and military aid the entire time, and the U.S. has been following their lead. Putin invaded Ukraine and made Europeans and Scandinavian countries question their economic and national security with his aims of reconstituting the Warsaw Pact. Putin bet big, doubled down, and it blew up in his face for once. The U.S. has been trying to convince Europe to ditch Nordstream 2 for years spanning multiple Presidents and gained absolutely zero traction. I don't see how this supposedly moved the needle in any appreciable way.

[blub]

Disagree on the US following the EU lead. Yes, the EU sanctions have perhaps more bite because of closer relations to Russia, but the EU required a lot of convincing and internal discussions to reach this point. There are important differences of opinion within the EU on how to handle Russia, whereas the US is fully behind its current course.

The seeds of today’s conflict had been planted one by one in the past 22 years and even beyond. What started as a an ambitious goal of an undivided Europe from Vancouver to Vladivostok ended because of inertia, decisions with unforseen consequencss and a level of mistrust into stark divisions between Russia on one side and the EU and US on the other.

This was not inevitable and indeed not the intention. 2011-2012 and the Western support for anti-government and anti-Putin protests in Russia marked a sharp deterioration of relations and the 2014 Maidan uprising, annexation of Crimea and Donbass war cemented the course we see today.

That the president of Ukraine indicated his willingness to forego NATO membership did nothing to change the above. Ukraine was training with NATO, receiving support and fighting an indirect war with Russia, so it seems unlikely that the words of the president were given much weight in Russia.